Name Service Switch

The Name Service Switch (NSS) facility is part of the GNU C Library (glibc) and backs the getaddrinfo(3) API, used to resolve domain names. NSS allows system databases to be provided by separate services, whose search order can be configured by the administrator in nsswitch.conf(5). The database responsible for domain name resolution is the hosts database, for which glibc offers the following services:

Glibc resolver

The glibc resolver reads /etc/resolv.conf for every resolution to determine the nameservers and options to use.

resolv.conf(5) lists nameservers together with some configuration options.
Nameservers listed first are tried first, up to three nameservers may be listed. Lines starting with a number sign (#) are ignored.

Note: The glibc resolver does not cache queries. To improve query lookup time you can set up a caching resolver. See #DNS servers for more information.

Overwriting of /etc/resolv.conf

Network managers tend to overwrite /etc/resolv.conf, for specifics see the corresponding section:

To prevent programs from overwriting /etc/resolv.conf you can also write-protect it by setting the immutable file attribute:

# chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf

Tip: If you want multiple processes to write to /etc/resolv.conf, you can use resolvconf.

Limit lookup time

If you are confronted with a very long hostname lookup (may it be in pacman or while browsing), it often helps to define a small timeout after which an alternative nameserver is used. To do so, put the following in /etc/resolv.conf.

options timeout:1

Hostname lookup delayed with IPv6

If you experience a 5 second delay when resolving hostnames it might be due to a DNS-server/Firewall misbehaving and only giving one reply to a parallel A and AAAA request.[1] You can fix that by setting the following option in /etc/resolv.conf:

options single-request

Local domain names

If you want to be able to use the hostname of local machine names without the fully qualified domain names, then add a line to /etc/resolv.conf with the local domain such as:

domain example.com

That way you can refer to local hosts such as mainmachine1.example.com as simply mainmachine1 when using the ssh command, but the drill command still requires the fully qualified domain names in order to perform lookups.

Lookup utilities

To query specific DNS servers and DNS/DNSSEC records you can use dedicated DNS lookup utilities. These tools implement DNS themselves and do not use NSS.

ldns provides drill(1), which is a tool designed to retrieve information out of the DNS.

For example, to query a specific nameserver with drill for the TXT records of a domain:

$ drill @nameserver TXT domain

If you do not specify a DNS server drill uses the nameservers defined in /etc/resolv.conf.

Privacy and security

The DNS protocol is unencrypted and does not account for confidentiality, integrity or authentication, so if you use an untrusted network or a malicious ISP, your DNS queries can be eavesdropped and the responses manipulated. Furthermore, DNS servers can conduct DNS hijacking.

You need to trust your DNS server to treat your queries confidentially. DNS servers are provided by ISPs and third-parties. Alternatively you can run your own recursive name server, which however takes more effort. If you use a DHCP client in untrusted networks, be sure to set static name servers to avoid using and being subject to arbitrary DNS servers. To secure your communication with a remote DNS server you can use an encrypted protocol, like DNS over TLS, DNS over HTTPS or DNSCrypt, provided that both the upstream server and your resolver support the protocol. To verify that responses are actually from authoritative name servers, you can validate DNSSEC, provided that both the upstream server(s) and your resolver support it.

Be aware that client software, such as major web browsers, may also (start to) implement some of the protocols. While the encryption of queries may often be seen as a bonus, it also means the software sidetracks queries around the system resolver configuration.[2]

Third-party DNS services

Note: Before using a third-party DNS service, check its privacy policy for information on how user data is handled. User data has value and can be sold to other parties.

DNS servers

DNS servers can be authoritative and recursive. If they are neither, they are called stub resolvers and simply forward all queries to another recursive name server. Stub resolvers are typically used to introduce DNS caching on the local host or network. Note that the same can also be achieved with a fully-fledged name server. This section compares the available DNS servers, for a more detailed comparison, refer to Wikipedia.

Only forwards using DNS over HTTPS when Rescached itself is queried using DNS over HTTPS.[3]

From resolved.conf(5): Note as the resolver is not capable of authenticating the server, it is vulnerable for "man-in-the-middle" attacks.[4] Also, the only supported mode is "opportunistic", which makes DNS-over-TLS vulnerable to "downgrade" attacks.[5]

From Wikipedia: dnsmasq has limited authoritative support, intended for internal network use rather than public Internet use.